Compass Summit, a forum for true interaction and exchange, examines some of today's most pressing problems through the lens of global citizenship, recognizing that human ingenuity is an unlimited resource. Guided by NPR's Ira Flatow, an intimate group of some of the world's best thinkers and doers convened along the rugged Palos Verdes coastline on Oct 23-26, 2011 at Terranea Resort to engage in meaningful conversation, ask questions, and challenge ideas -- we invite you to join in the conversation.

Parag Khanna

Parag Khanna is Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New American Foundation. He is author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Random House, 2008).
During 2007 he was a senior geopolitical advisor to United States Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2002-5, he was the Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution, managing the World Economic Forum’s Global Governance Initiative, an independent, international project to assess the level of effort and cooperation among governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations in implementing the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

From 2000-2002 he worked at the Forum in Geneva, where he specialized in scenario and risk planning.
Prior to joining the WEF, Parag was a Research Associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, conducting research projects on terrorism, conflict resolution in Central Asia, U.S. policy towards South Asia and defense policy.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs and a minor in Philosophy from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a Masters Degree from Georgetown’s Security Studies Program, and is earning a PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He also studied at the Freie Universitaet Berlin.

Parag's essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s, Policy Review, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, Prospect (U.K.), Slate.com, The New Republic, Survival (U.K.), Current History, GOOD, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, New Statesman (U.K.), Strategy+Business, Washington Times, Daily Star (Lebanon), Indian Express, India Today, OpenDemocracy.net (U.K.), TheGlobalist.com, and Correspondence. He has been featured on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera International, National Public Radio (NPR), Doordarshan (India), MTV Desi and other media.

His travel writing has covered countries including Russia, Lebanon, Cambodia, Turkey, and Pakistan. He has coined or pioneered such terms as Geodiplomacy, Bollystan, Second World, and Multi-Americanism.
Having traveled in close to 100 countries, Parag is a member of the Explorers Club. He had been a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly (2007-8), Visiting Fellow at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore (2006), Non-Resident Associate of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University (2004-5), and a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India (2004). In 2002 he was awarded the OECD Future Leaders Prize. He speaks German, Hindi, French, Spanish, and basic Arabic.

Have you ever heard Facebook described as "the third largest country in the world"? Parag Khanna, senior fellow at the New America Foundation, argues that despite its ever-climbing membership, Facebook cannot be evaluated in the same terms as an actual nation. "It transcends them," he says.